American Political History
The full story of this country, told through the people who lived it. From the soldier in the mud to the statesman at the table. Chronological, self-contained seasons, built on the primary sources. New episodes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
American Political History
The Grand Convention - An Assembly of Demigods
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4 prisoners from the Walnut Street jail carried Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention in a sedan chair — the oldest delegate, 81, riding above the cobblestones to sit with the youngest, a 26-year-old former army captain. Jefferson, reading the delegate list in Paris, called them “an assembly of demigods.” William Pierce of Georgia, sitting among them, wrote down what they actually looked like — and his private sketches of every man in the room are the heart of this episode: Madison, whose greatness “every Person seems to acknowledge”; Hamilton, brilliant and vain, caged by the two colleagues sent to outvote him; Wilson, who argued by force of reasoning; Sherman the shoemaker-turned-judge who “seldom fails”; the silent Robert Morris; and a young Charles Pinckney lying about his age. It is also the story of who wasn’t there — Jefferson and Adams an ocean away, and Patrick Henry, refusing his seat because, as Virginians told it, he “smelt a rat.” Meet the demigods... as their own colleague saw them.